The work bearing this title, from the pen of Kozminykh
Lanin, an engineer (Moscow, 1912, published by the Standing Commission of
the Museum for the Promotion of Labour under the Moscow Branch of the
Imperial Russian Technical Society. Price, 1 ruble 75 kopeks), is a summary
of data relating to the end of 1908.

The data cover 219,669 workers, or 71,37 per cent of the total number
of factory workers in the gubernia (307,773). The author says that he has
“carefully studied the data on each industrial establishment in
particular”, and has “included in the summary only that part of it which
left no room for doubt”.

Such statistics would have been of outstanding interest, even though
they come very late, had the data been tabulated more
sensibly. Unfortunately, it is precisely this word that has to be used, for
while Mr. Kozminykh-Lanin has compiled his tables most carefully, putting a
very great deal of labour into the calculation of all sorts of totals and
percentages, he has expended this labour irrationally.

The wealth of material seems to have overwhelmed the author. He has
made hundreds and thousands of calculations that are absolutely superfluous
and only encumbered his work, but he has not made some dozens of
calculations that are absolutely necessary, since no general picture can be
obtained without them.

Indeed, the author’s principal tables, which almost fill the whole of
his book, contain detailed figures, such, for in stance, as that the
workers who work from 9 to 10 hours a day
are divided into 16 categories according to the number of working
hours in two successive weeks (from 109 to 120 hours), and the average
number of working hours is calculated for each category! And all this has
been done twice:
for the workers engaged in production and for the auxiliary workers.

It has to be admitted that such detailing is, first of all, absolutely
unnecessary and that it looks like indulging in statistics for their own
sake, a kind of game with figures, to the detriment of a clear
picture and of material fit for study. Secondly, nine-tenths of these
“averages”, which the author has calculated to an accuracy of one per
cent, are simply a waste of labour, for out of a thousand readers of the
book (which will hardly find a thousand readers), only one reader will
perhaps think this sort of “average” necessary (moreover, that one reader
could have calculated it for himself if he had been so unfortunate
as to need it!).

On the other hand, the book completely lacks absolutely
indispensable summaries that the author could have drawn up with
far less expenditure of labour and which one cannot do without if one wants
to make a sensible study of the data of the survey. There are no summaries
(1) giving totals, by production groups, of workers who work in one, two
and three shifts;
(2) classing workers according to production and auxiliary jobs;
(3) giving average working hours according to production groups;
(4) giving totals of working time of adults and juveniles;
(5) singling out factories with various numbers of workers.

Let us dwell on this last point. The author seems so diligent—judging
by the list he gives of the works which he has published or prepared for
publication—and has such a wealth of interesting information at his
disposal that a critical analysis of his methods may be not only of
theoretical, but also of immediate practical use. We have already quoted
the author where he says that he has “carefully studied the data on
each industrial establishment in particular”.

It follows that a summary of the material, if only by the factory
groups used even by our official statistics (up to 20 workers, 21–50,
51–100, 101–500, 501–1,000, and over 1,000), was perfectly possible. Was
it necessary?

Undoubtedly. Statistics should not give arbitrary columns of figures
but should, by means of figures, throw light on those different social
types of the phenomenon under study that have fully emerged, or are
emerging, in reality. Can there be any doubt that establishments employing
50 and those employing 500 workers belong to essentially different
social types of the phenomenon we are interested in, or that the
entire social development of all the civilised countries increases the
difference between these types and leads to one of them
superseding the other?

Let us take the data on the working day. From the author’s summary
table of totals it can be concluded—provided we ourselves do a
certain amount of necessary statistical work which we do not see in the
book—that 33,000 workers (out of the 220,000 surveyed) work longer
than 10 hours a day. The average duration of the working day of the
220,000 workers is 9\frac12 hours. The question arises: are not these
workers, crushed by an excessive working day, employed in small
establishments?

This question arises naturally and necessarily. It is by no means
arbitrary. The political economy and statistics of all countries of the
world oblige us to put precisely this question, for the
prolongation of working hours by small establishments has been registered
only too often. Capitalist economic conditions necessitate this
prolongation in the case of small employers.

It turns out that the material at the author’s disposal did contain
data for answering this highly important question, but they have
disappeared in his summary! In his summary, the author gives us very long
and worthless columns of detailed “averages” but does not give
the necessary division of factories according to the number of workers.

In the case of Moscow Gubernia, such a division is even more necessary
(if we may here use the comparative degree) than elsewhere, for in Moscow
Gubernia we see a comparatively large number of small establishments
alongside a huge concentration of production. According to statistics for
1910, there were altogether 1,440 establishments in the gubernia, employing
335,190 workers. One-half of this number of workers (i. e., 167,199) was
concentrated in 66 factories, while at the other pole there were
669 establishments
employing a total of 18,277 workers. It is clear that we have here entirely
different social types and that statistics which do not distinguish between
them are no good at all.

The author was so absorbed in his columns of figures on the numbers of
workers who work 94, 95, etc., to 144, hours in two successive weeks, that
he left out altogether data on the number of establishments. The
number is given in the second part of his work, which deals with the length
of the working year; but the first part, which deals with the working day,
gives no information on the number of establishments, although this
information was no doubt available to the author.

The largest factories in Moscow Gubernia represent not only distinctive
types of industrial establishment, but also distinctive types of
population, with specific living and cultural (or rather cultureless)
conditions. The singling out of these factories, and a detailed analysis of
the data for each class of establishment, according to the number of
workers, are a necessary condition for rational economic statistics.

Let us cite the more important totals from Mr. Kozminykh Lanin’s work.

As we have said, his survey of the length of the working day covers
219,669 factory workers of Moscow Gubernia, or 71.37 per cent of their
total number, the textile workers being represented in his statistics more
widely than workers engaged in other industries. The survey covered 74.6
per cent of all the textile workers and only 49–71 per cent of the other
workers. Apparently, the survey was less extensive with regard to
small establishments; in any case, the data on the number of
working days in the year cover 58 per cent of the establishments (811 out
of the 1,394 existing in 1908) and 75 per cent of the workers (231,130 out
of 307,773). It is plainly the smaller establishments that have been left
out.

The author gives summary data on the length of the working day only for
all the workers put together. The result is an average of 9\frac12 hours a
day for adults and 7\frac12
hours for juveniles. The number of juveniles, it should be noted, is not
great: 1,363 against 218,306 adults. This suggests that juvenile workers in
particular may have been “hidden” from the inspectors.

Out of the total of 219,669 workers there were 128,628 (58.56 per cent)
working in one shift, 88,552 (40.31 per cent) working in two shifts and
2,489 (1.13 per cent) working in three shifts. Two-shift work predominates
over one-shift work in the textile industry, where there are 75,391 working
in two shifts (“in production”, i.e., exclusive of auxiliary workers)
against 68,604 working in one shift. The addition of repair and auxiliary
workers produces a total of 78,107 working in two shifts and 78,321 working
in one shift. In the case of metalworkers, on the other hand, one-shift
work predominates considerably (17,821 adult workers) over two-shift work
(7,673).

Summing up the total of workers who work different numbers of hours a
day, we obtain the following data:

Number of hours worked per day

Number of workers

Up to 8 hours . . .

4,398

From 8 to 9 hours . . .

87,402

9 ” 10 ” . . .

94,403

10 ” 11 ” . . .

20,202

} 33,466

11 ” 12 ” . . .

13,189

12 or more hours . . .

75

Total . . .

219,669

This shows how negligible still is the number of workers in Russia who
do not work more than 8 hours a day—a mere 4,398 out of 219,669. On the
other hand, the number of workers whose working day is excessively,
scandalously long is very great: 33,466 out of 220,000, or over 15
per cent, work more than 10 hours a day! And this without
considering overtime work.

To proceed. The difference in the length of the working day of
one-shift and two-shift workers can be seen from the following data, which
refer only to adult “production workers”, i.e., exclusive of repair and
auxiliary workers, who make up 8 per cent of the total.

Length of working day

Percentage of workers (working the indicated
number of hours a day)

One-shift

Two-shift

Up to 8 hours . . .

1.3

1.0

From 8 to 9 hours . . .

13.3

81.9

9 ” 10 ” . . .

60.7

14.7

10 ” 11 ” . . .

15.2

1.4

11 ” 12 ” . . .

9.5

1.0

12 or more hours . . .

—

—

Total . . .

100.0

100.0

This shows, among other things, that 17 per cent of the two-shift
workers work more than 9 hours a day, or more than is permitted
even by the law of 1897, which Mr. Lanin justly regards as exceedingly
outdated. Under this law, when work is carried on in two shifts, the number
of hours worked per day must not exceed nine, calculated over a
fortnight. And Mr. Lanin in all his calculations and tables takes precisely
a period of “two successive weeks”.

Since a very definite and precise law is violated so openly, it is easy
to imagine the fate of the other provisions of our factory legislation.

The average number of hours worked per day by a one-shift worker (only
adult and only engaged in “production”) is 9.89. This implies prevalence
of a ten-hour day without any reduction even on Saturdays, and
exclusive of overtime work. Needless to say such a long working day is
certainly excessive and cannot be tolerated.

The average number of hours worked per day by a two-shift worker is
8.97, i.e., there predominates in practice the nine-hour day which the law
requires in this case. Its reduction to eight hours is particularly
imperative because in the case of two-shift work the time from 10 p. m. to
4 (!!) a.m. is considered “night”, which means that in effect a very
substantial portion of the night is considered to be “day” for
the worker. A nine-hour day with night turned into day, and with
constant night work—that is the situation prevailing in Moscow Gubernia!

In conclusion of our review of Mr. Kozminykh-Lanin’s data, we wish to
point out that he finds the average duration of the working year to be 270
days. For textile workers,
however, the figure is somewhat smaller—268.8 days—and for
metalworkers, a little greater—272.3.

The way in which Kozminykh-Lanin has analysed these data on the length
of the working year is also most unsatisfactory. On the one hand,
excessive, utterly senseless detailing: we find as many as 130 horizontal
rows in the overall table on the length of the working year! Data on the
numbers of establishments, workers, etc., are given here
separately for each number of working days (per year) that occurs,
beginning with 22 and ending with 366. Such “detailing” is more like
complete failure to “digest” the raw material.

On the other hand, here too we do not find the necessary summaries
either on the numbers of workers in the factories or on the difference in
motive power (manual and mechanical factories). Hence one cannot obtain a
picture enabling one to understand how various conditions affect
the length of the working year. The wealth of data collected by the author
has gone to waste through very bad handling.

We can ascertain—roughly and far from accurately—the significance
of the distinction between large-scale and small-scale production even from
the author’s data, provided we re-analyse them somewhat. Let us take the
four main groups of establishments according to length of the
working year:
(1) those working up to 200 days a year;
(2) from 200 to 250;
(3) from 250 to 270, and
(4) 270 days or longer.

By summing up, for each of these categories, the number of factories
and that of the workers of both sexes, we obtain the following picture:

Length of working year

Average number of working days per
year

Number of

Average number of workers per factory

factories

workers

Up to 200 days . . . .

96

74

5,676

76

200 ” 250 ” . . . .

236

91

14,400

158

250 ” 270 ” . . . .

262

196

58,313

297

270 or more ” . . . .

282

450

152,741

339

Total

270

811

231,130

285

This shows clearly that the larger the factory, the longer (on the
whole) the working year. Consequently, the social and economic importance
of small undertakings is much less
in reality than appears from their share in, say, the total number of
workers. The working year in these undertakings is so much shorter than in
the large ones that their share in production must be quite
insignificant. Besides, with a short working year, these factories (the
small ones) are incapable of forming a permanent body of proletarians,
hence the workers here are more “bound” to the land, probably earn less,
are less cultured, etc.

A large factory intensifies exploitation by prolonging the working year
to the utmost and thus bringing into existence a proletariat which has
completely severed its ties with the countryside.

If we were to study the differences in length of the working year
depending on the technical organisation of factories (manual and mechanical
motive power, etc.), we could undoubtedly derive a whole series of highly
interesting indications of the living conditions of the population, the
position of the workers, the evolution of our capitalism, etc. But the
author, one can say, has not so much as touched on these questions.

All he has done is to give figures on the average duration of the
working year in factories of the different groups of industries. The
variations of the general average are very small: from 246 days in Group IX
(processing of mineral substances) to 291 in Group XII (chemical industry).

These differences, as the reader will see, are far less than those in
the duration of the working year in small and large factories in general,
irrespective of the industry to which they belong.

Differences in the type of industry are less characteristic,
and less important for social and economic statistics than differences in
the scale of production. This does not mean, of course, that the
former differences can be ignored. What it does mean is that sensible
statistics are absolutely impossible unless the latter differences are
taken into account.